“I’m sorry.”
“I thought it was a nice shot. I don’t usually do stuff like that. I thought it was a good one.”
“It is a good one. Thank you.” She reached across the table to touch his hand. And by the time he got to El Salvador, they were engaged.
On the evening after they found the bodies, an evening on which Zane felt particularly helpless, the alchemical rituals of his improvised darkroom did nothing to relieve his mood. He hung his film to dry and didn’t bother with contact prints. He had nothing. Only the unprintable record of the deaths of five people, a series of images that no one in middle America would want to see over a bowl of Rice Krispies, sunlight breaking through daffodils in a North Dakota kitchen. Defeat.
Zane left his film hanging from the shower rod and turned out the bathroom light and closed the bathroom door to keep out the dust. The final remains of his ice supply swam in the ice bucket. He fished the cubes out and splashed rum over them and then got the dead woman’s letter from his camera bag and sat down on the bed. He still could not bring himself to read it. Instead he took her picture out of the envelope and stared at it for a long while.
Had Lapierre been in the room he would certainly have advised Zane not to obsess over dead people he had never met, and in particular not to construct sentimental fantasies of their quiet lives in North Dakota farm towns. Furthermore, Lapierre would have warned Zane to lay off the rum. Lapierre did not drink, having formed the opinion in Vietnam that self-medication was the path to ruin. This was the only one of Lapierre’s working principles that Zane routinely ignored, purely on the grounds that it was no fun. And besides, Lapierre was not in the room.
Zane tucked the picture back into the envelope and then looked at the telephone for a long moment before he picked it up and dialed. Trish picked up on the fifth ring, her voice tinny through the long-distance static.
“Trish,” he said.
“Lucas, it’s really late. And you sound like you’ve been drinking.”
How can she get that from a single word? “Had a rough day.”
“We can’t afford this. It’s too expensive.”
He started slowly, then spilled the whole story, the abandoned van and the bodies in the grass and the flies and the victims’ vacant, desiccated eyes, his inability to make visual sense of it, and the fact that Christine looked just like her, a fact that was utterly untrue but which had become true in his mind as he developed his film. The words rushed out fast until he exhausted his supply.
“You’re my lifeline, Trish,” he said.
“I want you to come home. I don’t want you to stay there anymore.”
“I can’t come home. I have to finish this.”
After a long pause, he realized that there was nothing left to say. He said his goodbyes and hung up. Afterwards, he stared up at the ceiling for a long time. He remained in Central America until he was wounded, and then returned to Toronto. By the time he got back to El Salvador, he was no longer engaged. And these memories, try as he might to retrieve them, had long since collapsed into footnotes. He couldn’t remember the name of the restaurant, or where they went for coffee, or the smell of her hairspray. He couldn’t remember a thing.
Zane waited for an oncoming furniture truck to pass and then took the corner, drove slowly past the corner grocery and the flower shop and a run-down Ethiopian restaurant. He was just a few blocks short of normal; that is to say, he had only to drop Melissa off, and then could return home and lapse back into the comfortable pattern of his life: couch, beer, television, solitude.
“So what now?”
The question caught him off balance.
“What do you do now? Drink ’til you pass out on that wonderful couch?”
“Why would you think that?”
“You got more beer in your fridge than food.”
“I haven’t been shopping.”
“Seriously. What do you do now?”
“Seriously? I go back home, have a couple beers, and get on with my life.”
“Sounds lonely.”
Somewhere in the English language there exists some combination of words that will get this woman to shut up and leave you alone.
“You want to share those couple beers, Zane?”
Zane hesitated. The scent of a ferret wafts on the breeze, a scent that, deeply ingrained in racial memory, scares the shit out of rabbits.
“You’re half my age.”
“What the fuck does that mean?”
That’s the risk you take, moving beyond concrete facts. Sometimes a couple of beers is just a couple of beers; Freud said that. I’ll let you cry in my beer, if I can cry in yours.
“It’s not complicated,” she said. “I just want company.”
“All right, then.” He attempted to concentrate on traffic, realized he had omitted the word etiquette demanded, and tacked it on as an afterthought. “Sorry.”
Melissa said nothing.
So much for peace and quiet. One moment of weakness and you’ve got her in your apartment again, drinking your beer, socks on your coffee table, controlling the TV remote, digging through your stuff when you leave the room to take a leak.
Remarking on your spider plant, for example: “Shit, Zane, you ever water that thing?”
She hadn’t sat down yet, he hadn’t put his keys away. Just through the door and already there’s something.
“I mean, if you’re going to keep a plant.”
“It’s not really mine.”
“What, it just lives here?”
“No.”
“It comes and goes as it pleases? It has its own key?”
“My neighbour gave it to me.”
“So you kill it. Nice.”
“She gives everyone spider plants.”
“So you might as well kill yours?”
“She’ll only give me another. She hands them out to everyone. She’d give you one, too.”
“How sweet,” said Melissa, with not one hint of irony.
“She’s not all there.”
Melissa looked at him for some time, then said two devastating words: okay, then. She turned away and dropped her bag on the coffee table.
No, I’m telling you: this woman is not all there. But it’s futile; she’s not going to listen. Let her meet the neighbour one of these days, find out for herself. This woman talks your ear off with an accent you can barely comprehend and then presses another spider plant into your hands. Before you know it, you’re choked with all this jungle foliage. Zane had killed three to date.
Zane left Melissa in the living room and took his camera bag through to the bedroom and left it there.
Melissa called after him: “Look, you mind if I take a shower?”
Seems reasonable, with what you’ve been up to. The bathroom was civilized when last seen although the tub still feels like sandpaper. Chances of finding a clean towel are at least fifty-fifty. He told her to go nuts, said he’d find her a towel.
She went into the bathroom and closed the door. The sound of water splashing in the tub. Zane found himself a beer and opened it and then headed for the bedroom closet.
Something here is badly askew, several degrees out of plumb. A serious disturbance in the magnetic field, and it centres on the bathroom. Some boundaries, one does not cross, a matter of good manners. Even the ghosts retain a certain decorum. Christine never visits while you’re on the toilet. But Melissa has now penetrated the final refuge.
The foolish man invites the vampire into his home. Thereafter, he is powerless to resist. So says the legend. This being the case, you’re in serious trouble. You’ve got no holy water, no crosses, no Bible, only the remnants of a bottle of garlic powder. And you can’t just ambush people with garlic powder; it’s not done. Garlic powder in her hair and stuck to her eyelashes. She’ll feel compelled to inquire as to exactly what’s wrong with you. And here we go again.
He left the folded towel on the end of the kitchen counter. Melissa’s voice carried
through the sound of the water, singing, clear and on key. A tune that Zane recognized but could not name. Zane went into the living room and sat down and listened until she stopped, and then he turned on the television.
A photogenic anchor spoke in grave tones, but having come in halfway through the story Zane couldn’t make sense of it. Murder and mayhem, police lifting yellow crime scene tape that blocked the driveway of a large suburban home. A woman’s head, crying. A man’s head, angry. A wavering shot of broken glass and blood on the front step. Memory returns like a drain backing up: a house in Kosovo, glass and crockery broken on the kitchen floor, the decomposed bodies of a woman and her child, skulls with hair blackened by decay. He changed the channel.
“You got that towel?”
The splashing had stopped. Zane returned to the kitchen, picked the towel off the counter and knocked on the bathroom door. The door opened and he looked away to hand the towel to her, and she laughed at him.
“Shit, Zane, you seen a lot more than that.”
“That was different.”
She left the door open, so he retreated from the kitchen and sat down again on the couch. Presently she emerged, wrapped in the towel, and Zane heard the fridge open and the caps popping off two beer bottles.
She stood by the counter wearing the towel, her hair tousled and backlit, her smile mocking him. Zane considered her for a minute, mentally calculating the exposure that would make a halo of her hair while leaving detail in her face.
“I know what you’re thinking. I’m going to put my clothes on, before you lose control of yourself.”
She brought him the beer and then disappeared back into the bathroom. Zane returned his attention to the television. After a few minutes Melissa reappeared in jeans and T-shirt. She went into the kitchen and rummaged around under the sink and came out to the living room carrying Lapierre’s book. The dust jacket was missing.
“The cover’s all wrecked,” she said.
“I threw that out because I wanted it out.”
“You threw it out because you were pissed off at me.”
“Put it back in the trash.”
She stood for a moment backlit in the kitchen light and then simply walked to the boxes in the corner and put the book away and closed the box.
He pretended to be interested in the television.
Melissa went back out to the kitchen and washed her hands and then took a place at the other end of the couch. The sitcom came to its end and the credits rolled. Zane got up and went into the kitchen and made himself a sandwich. Then he remembered his manners and made her one, too, identically bland. He brought the plates out to the living room and handed one to her without saying anything and then sat down. They ate in silence.
“Was it a nice wedding?”
The laugh track bubbled on, but Zane had missed the joke.
“I was wondering when we got married. You know, sitting here watching TV, nothing to say.”
“What’s to say?”
“Shit, Zane, you amaze me. You really do.”
“I really don’t have much to say.” Hard to find acceptable topics: Zane was working hard to lose track of his own history, and had no interest in hers.
“Oh, I’m sure you’ll think of something.”
Zane studied her face.
“What was that you were singing?”
“What?”
“In the shower. What was that song?”
“Had your eye pressed to the keyhole, did you?”
“And you wonder why I don’t make conversation.”
“It was just some song off the radio.”
“You’re a good singer. I had no idea.”
“You have no idea about a lot of things, buster.”
“What do you actually do? Other than the obvious, I mean.”
“I strip.”
“You’re a stripper.”
“How else would I end up doing porn? What else you gonna do with dance lessons?”
She took a pull from her beer and stared blankly at the television for a moment, ran her fingers through her hair. The blue light of the television played over her face and Zane thought about how it would look on film. Then she looked down at her beer bottle and ran her finger around the rim, and then tossed her head back as if shaking off a chill.
“Yeah, you know, I learned to act and dance and sing but you can’t get a job with that. You get some shit job ringing in groceries. So, you do what you can. You learned to dance, might as well dance. I make good money. If I make a pile of money, I won’t have to do this shit anymore.”
“Then what?”
She paused for a long while, staring at the television.
“Then I go home.”
“Where’s home?”
“Vancouver.”
“That’s a long way.”
“I moved out here because this is the place if you want to act, but there isn’t anything here. Now I just want to go back. Go back to school, I don’t know. I just want to make enough money to start over.”
“Here’s to fresh starts.” He raised his bottle. All of us trying to outrun ourselves. Nobody ever gets a fresh start. But that’s a lesson we all have to learn on our own. And this kid still believes she can reinvent herself.
Zane felt he had to make a gesture. When she left, he gave her the spider plant. It was about the only thing he had to give.
CHAPTER FOUR
Two outs, bottom of the ninth, bases loaded: Zane hefts the bat and wiggles it experimentally, as if feeling nuances unknown to mortal men, then steps to the plate and kicks his toes firmly into the dirt. A hush falls over the crowd and the dugout falls silent. The din of hope and expectation settles out of the air and comes to rest firmly on his shoulders, but its weight does not bow him. He raises his eyes, sets his jaw and spits, then squints at the pitcher. He is ready.
Except that Zane is seven years old, the pitcher is a machine, and the din of expectation has seeped through the skin of his shoulders and alighted in the pit of his stomach, where it has settled into a jumpy backbeat over which a saxophone blows wild and crazy bebop. The sun is in his eyes and he prays that the shaking of the bat will not betray his terror. He hears his father’s shout.
“Go get ’em, Luke!”
The elder Zane is firmly in favour of team sports, in general, and specifically of baseball. He is a staunch adherent of the view, commonly held among his peers of the police force, that team sports are essential to a healthy childhood. Mens sana in corpore sano. Carrying the burden of a team’s hopes Builds Character. All for one and one for all.
For his part, Zane finds that carrying the burden of a team’s hopes builds only his urge to puke. He hates baseball, but he continues to play, in part to satisfy his father and in part because he hopes that one day he will stare squint-eyed into the sun, dig in his toes, and live up to the expectations placed on him by knocking the ball clean over the fence. He wants to hear his father say, “That’s my boy.”
He adjusts the batting helmet. A size too big for him, it rides his hair like a loaf of bread balancing on a lemon. His coach, standing by the pitching machine, catches his eye and nods, drops the ball into the whirling maw of the machine.
Zane tenses. The machine burps and ejects the ball, which arcs quickly towards him. He closes his eyes, swings, and whiffs.
He hears giggles from behind, quickly hushed, feels the hot surge of a shameful flush wash over his face and neck. His father’s voice reaches out again.
“Come on, Luke. Let’s go.”
The ball sails past him again, fearless of his wild swing. He can hear kids on the other team giggling and behind him the voice of a teammate: man, why’d we have to get windmill-boy?
Zane knows he should feel defiance, but instead he feels sick and wobbly and ashamed. When the last ball comes he swats ineffectually at it and then drops the bat and walks back to the bleachers without looking up.
“Nice going, doofus.”
His teammate’s rema
rk somewhat undermines the popular notion that baseball teaches Team Spirit. Zane’s coach lays a hand on his shoulder and tells him not to worry about it. On the ride home, his father says nothing. Presumably, he does not want to interfere in the character-building process.
Everything had changed. The motel room had disappeared. The bed and the cheap carpet were gone. In their place were a plain wooden desk and a utilitarian office chair, on a tile floor. A blackboard now covered the false window. On it was written “Anatomy 101,” and in the corner “Professor Payne.” On top of the desk sat a globe.
Why does an anatomy classroom require a globe? The head bone’s connected to the Kashmir; the Kashmir’s connected to the clavicle. The mind interprets these signals from the optic nerve and tells the retinas to get lost. Go away, the two of you, get together and get your story straight. And don’t come back until you’re prepared to be sensible.
Bill pulled out the desk chair and sat down with the confident enthusiasm of a man who never tires of his work. In résumé-speak, he had found his passion. He always clocked in five minutes early, never called in sick. He wore chinos, a dress shirt, and reading glasses, but the disguise was incomplete, as the shark tattoo still grinned from beneath his collar. Not a professor in the country looked like Bill.
Jade brought the girl in, a bleached-blonde kid with a thin face and a long nose, wearing an ill-fitting tartan skirt, white knee socks, glasses, pigtails, and a plain white blouse open to the third button. Wardrobe remained a problem. Also, the ring through her nose somewhat undermined the intended effect. She uncrossed her arms, bones wrapped in tissue paper, to fuss with her ponytails, revealing track marks and bruises. Not a virgin in the country looked like this girl.
“When do I get the money?”
“When we’re finished,” said Barker.
“Don’t worry,” said Jade. “This is easy. You’ve done it all before.”
Zane wondered what experience Jade had, precisely, that allowed her to assure the girl that this was going to be easy. Lacking applicable experience, he suspected it would be anything but. Bill got out of the chair and Jade led the girl over to it and motioned for her to sit.
Combat Camera Page 5
